"After such a vicious attack, it is a wonder she recalls anything. Perhaps in time she will remember more."

The maid mumbled something.

"Oh, yes. She says she smelled him," interpreted Miss Plumblossom with a toss of her head. "As if we could go around smelling people."

"What sort of smell was it?" Akitada asked, interested in spite of himself.

Tora moved impatiently. "Never mind, sir. We'll get it all sorted out. How was your trip? Catch any murderers?"

"Superintendent Kobe has arrested Nagaoka's father-in-law, and I brought home a guest, a Professor Harada. He used to work for Yasaburo. He is pretty sick, but may be able to give us some information. Seimei is tending to him now." Akitada looked curiously at the pretty girl. "Is this young woman by any chance a member of Uemon's Players?"

"Yes, Gold's an acrobat. She's fantastic." Tora smiled proudly at the girl, who returned the adoring look.

"In that case, Gold," said Akitada, "you may be able to answer a question. You stayed at the temple where the woman was murdered, didn't you? On the fifth day of last month?"

"Yes, sir. Tora's already asked me about that. I saw nothing, and neither did any of the others, sir."

Akitada hid his disappointment. "You did not leave your room after dark?"

"No. We had performed that afternoon and I was tired. Besides, it was raining."

"You slept alone?"

"No. My sister and Ohisa shared the room. They came to bed later, but my sister also saw nothing."

"And Ohisa?"

"Ohisa took off before either of us awoke."

"Took off?"

Gold made a face. "Ohisa used to be Danjuro's girl. Danjuro is our lead actor, and all the women are wild about him." Tora glowered and she added with a smile, "Except me. I can't stand the arrogant bastard. Anyway, he dumped Ohisa and she left in a snit, just like that. We would've been short a dancer if Danjuro's new girlfriend hadn't stepped in."

"And none of the others saw anything suspicious?"

She shook her head. "They would've told me. We talked about the murder all the way back to the capital."

Akitada thanked her and turned to Genba. "I trust everything was quiet in my absence?"

Genba nodded. "But there was an odd little man here a little earlier. He asked for you. Something about a screen he's supposed to paint for your lady, so I took him to her. I hope that was all right?"

"Heavens, Noami!" Akitada jumped up. "He is a very unpleasant person. I had better see him before he upsets my wife."

He met Tamako in the corridor outside her quarters. She had heard of his arrival and was coming to look for him.

"I am glad you are back safely." She bowed in her restrained and formal manner, but her eyes searched Akitada's face.

"I looked in on Tora first and found him surrounded by admiring females, plotting how to catch the slasher." Seeing her incomprehension, he explained, "A man who has been mutilating and killing young women in the city."

Her eyes grew round. "How very horrible," she breathed. "I had no idea such things were happening. Is it safe to go out?"

"Safe enough, provided you go in the daytime, take a maid with you, and don't venture into unsavory parts of town. By the way, I brought you another patient." He explained briefly about Harada.

She nodded, then took his arm. "Come! I have someone waiting to talk to you. The painter of the pretty scroll has called. I left him giving a drawing lesson to your son."

An irrational fear seized Akitada. "You left him with Yori?"

But the scene which met his eyes was harmless enough. The defrocked monk, dressed in a decent gray robe, his short hair brushed back, knelt next to Akitada's son. Both held ink brushes and were bent over a large sheet of paper.

The boy looked up and a broad smile lit his face. Jumping to his feet, he ran to his father and wrapped his arms around his thighs. "I'm painting," he cried. "I painted cats. Come see!"

Akitada nodded to Noami, who bowed with unexpected politeness.

"I called, sir," he said in his grating voice, "to see if you wished me to proceed with the screen for your lady. Since you were not here, it was my great fortune to meet the beautiful lady herself and your charming son."

The compliments were courteous, but Akitada did not want this man near his family. "It was good of you to come," he said brusquely, "but we have not really had time to consider the matter."

Yori tugged at his sleeve.

"I was perhaps a little unreasonable about the price," Noami suggested.

Still easily shamed by money problems, Akitada felt the color rise to his face. "No, no. I have been too busy to consider and will let you know when we make up our minds." He hoped Noami would get the idea that the visit was over.

But the painter lingered. "Young Yori has something to show you," he reminded Akitada.

Reluctantly Akitada allowed his son to draw him over to Noami's side. The sheet of paper was covered with pictures of cats. Some were admirably true to life, their catlike postures sketched with consummate skill: a cat jumping for a mouse, a cat staring down into a fishbowl, a cat toying with a beetle, a cat hissing, and a cat eating a bird. The others were childish copies by Yori, painstakingly executed, the black-on-white scheme enlivened by vivid touches of red.

"Your son has a lively sense of color," Noami commented, his eyes watching Akitada's face.

The red touches looked like blood, were meant to be blood. Yori had got the idea from the just-killed bird and applied a thick layer of red grease paint from his mother's cosmetics to the bird and to the face of the cat. Pleased with the effect, he had then given all the other cats red muzzles. He pointed, quite unnecessarily. "Blood! Cats eat birds and mice and they get blood on them."

Tamako came to take a look and clasped her hand to her mouth.

Noami chuckled, a dry coughlike sound. "A boy after my own heart," he said, and put a hand on Yori's shoulder. "So young and already so observant. What a man you will be someday!"

Tamako jerked up the child. "It is time for his nap," she cried, and ran from the room, Yori protesting loudly.

Akitada looked at the painter with hatred in his heart. Controlling himself with difficulty, he said coldly, "We won't keep you any longer. And there is no need to return. I will send for you if we decide on the screen."

Noami nodded. "I am told you saw the hell screen at the temple?"

"Yes. It is greatly admired."

The painter cocked his head. "But not by you?"

Akitada said stiffly, "I do not hold with the Buddhist theory of hell."

"Ah! I, on the other hand, have problems with the Western Paradise." Noami stepped closer and fixed Akitada with his deep-set, burning eyes. "What pleasure can be so great that it matches pain? We all suffer the agonies of hell, but none has tasted the joys of paradise." With that he turned and walked out.

When Tora felt well enough to begin his investigation two days later, he dressed in the worst clothes he could find: baggy pants, liberally stained and torn in places; a ragged cotton shirt; a quilted jacket with unmatched patches, tied about the waist with a hemp rope; and old straw sandals. He untied his long hair, rubbed it with some greasy lamp oil, and wrapped a rag around his head. Finally, putting a scowl on his unshaven face, he left.

He was headed for the western city, where poor people, criminals, and outcasts lived in tenements, abandoned ruins, or squatters' shacks in open fields. There was the heart of the underworld of the city, the refuge of gangs and notorious criminals, of vagrants, beggars, cripples, and the insane.

The day was overcast and cold. Tora walked at a comfortable pace to avoid undue strain to his recent injuries and thought about Yukiyo. She had tried her best to describe her ordeal. In a shamefaced whisper, she had spoken of her wounds, the horrible disfigurement of her face, the deep slashes across her breasts and abdomen. The monster had taken pleasure in the cutting, it seemed, but was not bent on killing her, or he would have stabbed or disemboweled her. Appalled by the viciousness of it, Tora had wondered if she encountered a demon instead of a man. His small size, his superhuman strength and cruelty, and his acrid stench all pointed to it. But Yukiyo had shaken her head stubbornly. He had been a man. As for the smell, it been more like hot lacquer or lamp oil, maybe.

Some sort of craftsman, thought Tora as he walked. It was not a useful clue. There were too many of them in the city. Tora planned to retrace Yukiyo's steps that night, beginning with the place where she had met the slasher, at a cheap brothel. She had been soliciting there without any luck, but as she was walking away a hooded figure had reached out from an alley and drawn her into the shadows. In a hoarse whisper, the man had offered to pay her thirty coppers to go home with him. Thirty coppers was wealth; it would pay for food for weeks, and she had agreed eagerly.

They had walked a long way, through a warren of back alleys in the far western city wards. Once she had glimpsed the roof ornament of a pagoda, and not long after that they had come to a grove of bamboo and entered an empty unlit house. There, in the darkness, he had given her a cup of wine. After that she remembered nothing until she woke in another alley in horrible pain, looking up into the horrified eyes of people who found her half-naked and bleeding.

Tora found the brothel easily. It was a rickety wooden building with the impressive name Crane Terrace. A cheap wineshop occupied the street level and a few rooms above served prostitutes and their customers. The entrance was remarkable only for the stained and torn door curtain with a misshapen bird painted on it. Tora noted the narrow passage along the side of the building. Here, among the remnants of broken sake casks and vegetable peelings, the slasher had lurked that dark night, catching his victim by the simple expedient of grabbing her arm as she passed by. Tora shook his head. Even a half-starved whore should have had the good sense to run.

He ducked under the curtain into the semidarkness of the wineshop. A thick, fetid vapor of food smells and smoke almost took his breath away.

He stood on a dirt floor. On his right, a set of steep stairs led above. Straight ahead a fire pit was putting out the smoke and the indescribable smells from a large cauldron stirred by a shaggy-haired hag. On his left, a one-eyed brute sat next to a keg. Three ragged creatures eyed the newcomer blearily. The innkeeper growled, "Wine's a copper, take it or leave it. For another copper, you can eat."

Tora suppressed his revulsion. "Wine," he said gruffly, joining the three guests.

"Show me the money first!"

Tora dug out a copper coin. The man snatched it from his hand, held it up to his eye, and nodded. Dropping the coin down the front of his shirt, he dipped out a measure of dark, cloudy liquid from the keg. It was easily the worst wine Tora had ever tasted and almost choked him. "I'm looking for a girl," he said when he found his voice.

"I don't provide whores," snapped the host. "You get your own around here." One of the customers snickered.

"She's my sister," said Tora, improvising. "Our mother's dying and she's asking for her, so I came to the capital to look for her. I was told she works this part of town."

The one-eyed man said gruffly, "She must be hard up. Sorry about your troubles. What does she look like?"

This could not be answered easily, so Tora said vaguely, "About this high, kinda small bones, pretty hair. Ordinary, you know."

"It's not fat Mitsu," volunteered one of the guests.

"And Kazuko's a good lay, but bald as an egg," added another.

The one-eyed man turned to the old hag stirring the cauldron. "What do you think, Mother?"

She wiped the sweat from her face with her sleeve. "Maybe she's the sickly little thing. Only came a few times. Seems like her name was Yukiyo."

Tora asked eagerly, "Any idea who she went with?"

The old woman said, "Nobody. She came in, but there were no takers. She looked so sick I gave her some soup on account and she left."

Tora dug out another copper. "Here. We may be poor, but we pay our debts."

This gesture worked wonders. They all fell to a serious discussion of every man or woman Yukiyo might have talked to, but the men who visited the brothel were mostly transients, nameless laborers, vendors, porters, beggars, or monks.

"Monks?" Tora asked. "Looking for women?"

His naivete caused general hilarity. "Some of 'em are worse than ordinary men," cackled the old woman, "and, come to think, there was one who kept looking at the girl. Getting up his courage, I guess. But he never talked to her that I could see."

"Is there a monastery around here?" Tora asked, thinking of the pagoda.

There was not. It was a dead end. Tora thanked them and left.

He walked northward, passing through alleys and poor streets, and began to suspect that the slasher had avoided landmarks which his victim might recall. He had zigzagged through quarters, always skirting their main gates. No wonder Yukiyo could not give a clear account of their route.

He wished he could have talked to her some more, but after his master had returned, Yukiyo had refused to visit again. Miss Plumblossom had snorted. "I don't know what's come over the girl. When we were leaving, she grabbed my arm and started rushing for the gate. And now she won't come back!"

But her unexplained fright was not the only thing troubling Tora. Apparently all the slasher did was cut her. Yukiyo was certain that she had not been raped. Lust, even perverted and sadistic lust, Tora could understand, but this was something else entirely.

The quarter he was entering now was more depressing than the previous one. People lived here, if you could call it that, but there were far too many loitering men. No work meant high crime or slow starvation. And that reminded Tora of another troubling fact. The slasher had offered Yukiyo thirty coppers to go home with him. That was a lot of money for an employed laborer, let alone an outcast or mendicant monk.

He raised his eyes to scan the rooftops once again for the spire of a pagoda, when he was suddenly jostled, and a string of curses rang in his ears. Before he could blink, he was flung violently against a house wall, and punches rained on his head and chest. Tora raised his arms to protect his face and waited for his chance. But the onslaught ended as abruptly as it had begun. His assailant spat disgustedly and turned to walk off.

Hot fury washed over Tora. He raised himself from his half -prone position and rushed after his assailant. Grabbing his elbow, he spun him about, cried, "That's for hitting a man for no reason, bastard," and landed a fist squarely on the other's chin. He stepped back instantly. The other man, young and poorly dressed, wore a bloody bandage over part of his face.

He raised his arm to protect himself, but Tora said, "Never mind! I wasn't done with you for the thrashing you gave me, but I'll put it on your account, seeing that someone else has already done the job. I don't like an uneven fight."

The other man growled, "Don't let that stop you. I can beat you any day, turd."

He was slightly taller and much wider in the shoulders than Tora, but the fight had gone out of him.

"Why did you hit me.'

Slowly the other man lowered his arm. "You pushed me, bastard. Nobody does that to me."

"I didn't see you. I was looking for a pagoda."

The eye not covered by the bloody bandage narrowed, looking Tora up and down. "You're a stranger here?"

There was no sense in inventing new lies. Tora told the story of his dying mother and lost sister again, adding some heartrending detail which brought tears to his own eyes.

The ruffian rubbed his bristly chin, reddened from Tora's fist. "Sorry, buddy," he said hoarsely. "Looks like you're worse off than me. Didn't mean to lay into you, but I've had a bad day with some rough fellows. My head's sore as hell itself and when you bumped into me I was seeing stars."

"Oh, in that case," said Tora, "allow me to make up for it with a cup of wine. My name's Tora, by the way."

"Junshi." The other man grinned, revealing a large recent gap in his front teeth. "Thanks. I won't say no. There's a place around the corner sells some decent muck."

The place was worse than the Crane Terrace, being smaller, dirtier, and smellier, but the wine was slightly better.

"Now, about your sister," said Junshi awkwardly. "She may be dead, you know. I work for the warden and I can tell you, street girls have a hard life in this quarter."

"I know, but I've got to keep looking till I know one way or another."

Junshi sighed. "Most men here can't pay more than a copper or two for a woman, and there's a lot of rough stuff. My boss could tell you how many dead girls they fish out of the canals or find among the garbage in the alleys."

"By heaven! The warden!" Tora slapped his forehead with his hand. "Why didn't I think of that? Where's his office?"